Posts

Following one of the most disastrous launches of 2023, The Day Before’s developer, Fntastic, has confirmed that it’s shutting down and that the game will go offline on Jul 13, 2025. It’s tough to know where to even begin when talking about The Day Before. Originally pitched as a live-service survival game,The Day Before was once one of the most pre-ordered and talked-about games on Steamthat looked like it had a bright future ahead of it....

The Elder Scrolls Onlinejust announced its newest chapter,Gold Road, taking us back to Cyrodiil and Skingrad. But while all of the DLC staples like new dungeons, quests, and world events are present, something is missing. Companions were introduced three years agoin Blackwood as a way to help players with overland content and dungeons (if someone in the group leaves). You can level them up, increase your affinity to unlock quests, and mix-and-match their gear, all to help you in fights....

Quick Links The Lost Caverns of Ixalan isMagic: The Gathering’s take on the hollow-world sci-fi trope. The Aztec-themed plane of Ixalan doesn’t have a molten iron core, and instead has a lost civilization living deep underground powered by an internal sun. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say there are several civilizations living underground. In addition to the dinosaurs, goblins, and humans, merfolk tribes populate the Deeproot Tree’s plunging tendrils deep beneath the surface....

The woodland mansions inMinecrafthave a surprising amount of depth and detail, randomly choosing from a pool of over 50 unique rooms that can spawn when these structures are generated. Cool factoids aside, though, you’re probably interested in these rooms for one main reason: the loot. There are all kinds of things that you’re able to spawn in woodland mansion chests, ranging from low to intermediate rarity items like coal, bread, or name tags, to incredibly rare items that, on average, won’t pop up until you’ve searched over a dozen chests....

The Sims 4’s long-awaited For Rent expansion has just launched today and a Landgraabs & Son(s) pop-up has appeared in Central London to celebrate the occasion. Although a lot of Sims fans might have their eye on the future withProject Rene recently being confirmed to be in development and planned for release as a free-to-download title, that doesn’t mean that The Sims 4 is anywhere near being done. Far from it, in fact, as a brand-new landlord-focused expansion pack has just released today - the For Rent expansion....

I like mySteam Deck. It’s handy when I want to play a demanding game, but the telly is in use. I’m not going to force my partner to watch me playSpace Marine 2or Cyberpunk 2077 when she’s not interested in either genre or subject matter. So, she can watch something she wants to and I can play a game next to her on the sofa. My other use for the Steam Deck is playing indie games that I can’t be bothered to sit at my PC for....

Quick Links In the early going,Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Princeis as concerned with scene-setting as it is with gameplay. In other words, you’ll be on somewhat of a short lease as to what you can do in this game, at least relative to the openness still to come. This can make deciding which monsters to scout for your first team oddly difficult - there are only so many options at this point, but without the ability to synthesize them, you have to rely on them pretty much as-is....

I’ve been intoTekkenfor nearly enough my entire life. Tekken 3 was my first, defining my early conceptions of what a 3D fighting game could be. The wild variety of fighters and styles, the depth of its combat, and the simple awesomeness of it all ensured I was hooked forever. This was followed into the PS2 era with Tekken 4 and Tekken Tag Tournament, but things really got interesting with Tekken 5 in 2004....

Last year, TheGamer published a lovely series of features in which each editor recalled their favorite holiday gaming memories. Mine was the story ofthe year I played Batman: Vengeance, a terrible game that I credit with awakening my lifelong interest in game criticism. If that sounds like I was digging deep to find the silver lining in what is actually abadholiday story, you’d be right. The truth is, my Christmas gaming memories are not as warm and fuzzy as my colleagues’, and it didn’t seem right to bum everyone out with holiday tales of hurt feelings, disappointment, and family dysfunction - not while everyone else is gushing about the year they bonded with their grandma over Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, or whatever....

Quick Links The asymmetrical horror genre persists thanks to the help ofDead by Daylight, with its matches pitting a sole Killer against a team of four Survivors. The game has dozens of characters you’re able to choose to play, with even more customization options. Nancy Wheeler, from Netflix’s Stranger Things, is just one of the Survivors you can pick. As for how Nancy Wheeler came fromStranger Things' universe into the Entity’s realm, well, her investigative nature led her to Hawkins National Laboratory, and it all went downhill from there....

Lethal Companyhas taken social media and the gaming community by storm, somehow making an intergalactic version of late-stage capitalism look fun and exciting, but also terrifying; not in an exploitative or systemic way, but in a, “Oh my god, I’m about to be eaten by a monster!” kind of way. While there are plenty of threats you’ll have to encounter, like landmines, turrets, gravity, and plenty of monsters, Thumpers can be a big challenge, especially if you’re newer to the game....

Quick Links Does it ever feel like you’re dealing analog sticks with a mind of their own on your PS5 gamepad? Does it bring on a sense of existential dread, especially mid-game? Well, we know how irritating it is when your camera keeps panning without input or your character goes wandering off in games. That’s stick drift for you. The good news is, most of the time, it’s an easy fix that you can knock out yourself without fancy tools or taking apart your controller....

Volition was shut down by Deep Silver and Embracer Group in August, bringing its 30 years of experience in the gaming industry to an abrupt end. This came after the underperformance of the recentSaints Rowreboot, a game sofraught with issues in developmentthat devs reportedly had to pull 12-hour shifts just to get it out the door. While it hardly ended on a high, Volition is warmly remembered for the first four Saints Row games as well as the Red Faction series....